When a relationship ends, women tend to term consensual physical acts as rape, the Delhi High Court remarked while upholding the acquittal of a government official in a rape case.
Justice Pratibha Rani made the observation while rejecting the plea of a 29-year-old woman, who had recently filed a domestic violence case against her husband, seeking prosecution in a rape case she had lodged before marrying him in 2015.
The woman had moved the High Court challenging a trial court’s order of March 2016 that acquitted him. “This court has observed on a number of occasions cases where both persons, out of their own will, develop consensual physical relationship. When the relationship breaks up, the women use the law as a weapon for vengeance and personal vendetta. They tend to convert consensual acts as incidents of rape, defeating the very purpose of the provision. This requires a clear demarcation between rape and consensual sex, especially in the case where complaint is that consent had been given on promise of marriage,” the court observed.
The man had been let off by the trial court as the woman turned hostile before the lower court. Initially, after lodging a rape case, she, along with the man, had moved the High Court and later the Supreme Court seeking quashing of the FIR saying they wished to get married. However, both courts rejected their plea and asked them to face trial, during which the woman did not make any incriminating statement against him.
